I remember revisiting this one in the summer of '67, when I was working on the West coast of Canada. I had first read it in the spring during March Break, and was feeling excoriated by Ginsberg's Jeremiad against the dispassionate and cynical middle and ruling classes.

The reason I remembered it on Vancouver Island was an afternoon talk show I saw then exhibiting poor Allen tinkling Hindu finger-cymbals and bells during a recitation of his anti-Vietnam later poetry.

The interviewer seemed both bemused and mildly amused by it all.

Poor Allen. His poetry and he, himself, openly Gay in a repressed age, were mocked by the media. Plus, as I have been, he was bipolar.

Now, of course, his work is classic lit. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if Howl is readily available in the public domain. You kids should read it! An outspoken Beatnik when it was published, Allen saw Howl banned almost everywhere.

I first read him in Evergreen Magazine, itself banned in many states.

A divided America?

Yes, then as now.

But if freedom has had an upsurge since then, free speech has not.

And if you're interested in the evolution of free speech -

This is one work to read!
***

Well, it’s now several months after I first wrote this review, and - wouldn’t you know it - I’ve found Ginsberg’s Howl in its entirety:

And here, for your enchantment at its pure poetry and edification at its (still very relevant) message, it is.

Read and heed!

https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfil...

Rating: 4.5* of five

I've shifted my 4.5-star review of this comic book, I mean graphic novel!, to my blog Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

This is a case where the addition of pictures made a huge and positive difference to my experience of a work. If, like me, you don't want to decode words and interpret pictures because the combination is almost always less than the sum of the parts, here is an exception to the rule.

Beautiful. I understand the poem far better for having read this.

And someone please explain why James Franco gets so much snark lobbed at him. The film of this was quite good.

Five stars for the poem, one star for the graphics and typography. This book is patently NOT the way to read this poem. Howl is momentum; Howl is movement; Howl is a wall of words that knocks you down and ties you up. This book was full of stills plucked from an animation and breaks up the wall of words over hundreds of pages. Both choices disservice both the poem and animation. The poem ends up broken into pieces. The pictures are indistinct and poorly composed, because they were never meant to be stills. The art itself borders on cheesy, with characters firmly in the uncanny valley and visual metaphor that is just too easy.

This book is a dead thing. If you want a better experience, print the poem out in its entirety on a roll of butcher paper and read it out loud to yourself by candlelight in an empty room.

fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from is a pilgrimage to a cross in the void


I think I've tried to listen to readings of Howl in the past but the stupidly let the time stamp and my lack of knowledge turn me away. Split down across pages like this, I could really get lost in the poetry, enjoying the fact there was no consistent rhyme or rhythm, really just focusing on the words and the contradictions and finding a rhythm in it all the same. Teenage me would have loved this and she would have let everyone know it

The old cliche, "ignorance is bliss," has proven untrue for me. I read a graphic novel version of this and it made me hate the poem, because I didn't appreciate the graphic interpretation. My review of the graphic novel: below.

I gave this another chance, and I'm grateful I did. I read the poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem....

Ginsburg isn't showing off, as I accused him in my original, scathing review. The man pours out his feelings. His friend lies dying and he howls his words from a broken heart, weeping over the suffering of his generation. It almost brought me to tears and moves me now as I write this. He blames a societal force he calls "Moloch," a name in the Bible for a Canannite god famous for accepting babies into the flames of its stone belly. He ends the poem by opening his heart for his friend who lies dying in a hospital.

Beautiful and powerful, moved my heart.





------------
Original read, one star, around June 15th
I thought this would amaze and delight.

Instead I feel annoyed. Ginsburg had amazing talent with prose, but, in my opinion, he over-indulges and shows it off with melodrama and nonsense.

I love the idea of adapting Howl into a graphic novel, and indeed, reading Drooker's initial response to this proposition proved that this was no small feat. The images do create a dynamic, visual mise-en-scene to complement Ginsberg's powerful lines (I especially loved watching the evolution of Moloch as he emerged more and more visibly as the poem progressed), but I also realized that Ginsberg's language is so imagistic, the illustrations almost didn't add to the evocative emotion. Howl is powerful and resilient to the test of time, because its readers can visualize the angel-headed hipsters and bodies leaping off of towers, the desolation of the rise of the "machinery of night," even without the pictures.

Do read Howl. With images. Sans images. You will be disturbed either way.

He went through more than 20 drafts of 'Howl'.

Wow. That's amazing, right?

I understand it though. And allowing a look at the drafts (similar to Ariel by Sylvia Plath)... man.

So I'm not really reviewing this book as best I can, because damn it, its good, you should read it, hear him recite it, end of poem.

Beatnik bullshit. Totally not for me. I had no idea what this was when I picked it out from the library on my search for exploring more graphic novels. I flipped through and decided the art was ok, the pages not overcrowded (which is my criteria for choosing graphic novels). Little did I know I was headed toward beat movement territory, which I very recently discovered I do not like. I can credit the first chapter (or even introduction? I cannot remember.) of Naked Lunch to this discovery. I feel like it’s simply pseudo-intellectualism, spawned by heavy drug use and mostly nonsensical to boot.

I have no use whatsoever for poetry unless it's set to music and called lyrics. So, really, for me, three stars out of five is a tour de force. How I got to this stage of my life without reading beat poetry is easy to explain: I quit college too early, never did drugs save booze, and I am a recluse.

Ufffffffffffffffffffffff, complicado, BASTANTE COMPLICADO!, reseña en un rato :D

Firstly, I love Howl, and I really wanted to like this book, but the art was really off-putting. I didn't realize that it was a movie though, and I'm genuinely curious about how that looks. I felt bad that I ended up throwing the towel in on this one. That being said, I was able make it to my favorite line, which is all that matters to me. I follow a twitter that tweets lines from Howl continuously, and I always keep an eye out for
"...who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons."

I can't explain why, but I love that line, and I love Howl, and I'd really like to see more artistic renderings of it.

Cool! Las ilustraciones son excelentes